USA - Southeast Florida

The three Southeast Florida sites lie off Broward and Palm Beach counties on the northern Florida reef tract, between Hallandale and Boca Raton. Anderson dived Tenneco Towers on 26 February 2022, and Rabbit Ears off Pompano Beach and the United Caribbean wreck, off the Boca Raton/Deerfield Beach line (a Fort Lauderdale-area dive), on 8 April 2022, a two-dive day.

Rabbit Ears is a low natural ledge ruled by giant barrel sponges, set among sea rods, sea plumes, and red and orange encrusting sponges, with only a few small stony coral colonies (meandroid corals and a large-polyp massive coral) on algae-covered rock. The other two sites are artificial. The United Caribbean is a 43 m (140 ft) freighter sunk in 2000 in about 21 m (70 ft) of water (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission deployment PB0050), its girders and hull plating overgrown with sponges, coralline algae, and hydroids. Tenneco Towers is a set of decommissioned oil and gas platform sections whose steel legs carry sponges, octocorals, and a few stony corals, including a well-grown brain coral, wrapped in dense schools of baitfish and grunts.

A blind Claude computer-vision point count of Anderson's own photographs puts coral cover at 4.4% at Rabbit Ears (17 photos), 3.8% on the United Caribbean wreck (14 photos), and 2.6% on Tenneco Towers (45 photos). On the United Caribbean, one small colony carries white blotches of unclear cause (partial bleaching or tissue loss).